Mixed-Lineage Kinase 4 (MLK4) – a new player in breast cancer progression

Speaker: dr Anna Marusiak (CENT Warszawa)

Talk: Mixed-Lineage Kinase 4 (MLK4) – a new player in breast cancer progression

Time: 5th April 2019, 9:00 am

Venue: Intercollegiate Faculty of Biotechnology, Abrahama 58, hall 042

I graduated with a MSc in Medical Biotechnology from the University of Wroclaw. I then moved to the UK where I did my doctoral studies at the University of Birmingham. During PhD I investigated the contribution of fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR) to the malignant phenotype of breast cancer cells using a proteomic approach. My postdoctoral fellowship took place at Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute in Signalling Networks in Cancer Group. Since then my work in cell signalling has been focused on the family of Mixed-Lineage Kinases (MLKs) and their contribution to carcinogenesis.

In December 2015 I started a position as a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre of New Technologies in the Laboratory of Experimental Medicine. The grants that I have been awarded, Fuga by NCN and Homing by FNP, allowed me to investigate the role of MLK4 in breast cancer progression. MLK4 is a serine/threonine kinase that plays a role in a variety of cellular processes. According to TCGA, amplification and mRNA upregulation of MLK4 is present in 23% of invasive breast carcinoma and our transcriptomic analysis revealed that it is most abundantly expressed in triple-negative breast cancer subtype. Nevertheless, the role of MLK4 in the pathogenesis of breast cancer has been poorly understood so far. My talk will focus on our recent data where we identified MLK4 as a novel therapeutic target for triple-negative breast cancer.